What Has Your Mother Given You?

A Saturday Prompt

A mother’s love: Ann Dunham with her young son, Barack Obama. (Credit: Obama Facebook page)

The often dissonant daily drumbeat of politics can make it easy to lose sight of deeper and more enduring values and experiences that shape us. So today—the day before Mother’s Day—I want to reflect on some of these and highlight the role that mothers play in all of our lives.

Next month the Obama Presidential Center is opening in Chicago, with a particular emphasis on cultivating citizenship and community. The center includes a museum, a library and active spaces to bring people together. But former President Barack Obama has expressed particular affection for the Ann Dunham Water Terrace, named for his mother, which will include a water fountain where children can play.

Note how Obama describes his mother, an anthropologist whose work included a focus on rural development in Indonesia. “My mom didn’t live to see me as president, but she was reflected in everything I did as president because she was a kind person, somebody who believed in doing things for other folks and not just thinking for yourself,” he said. “A lot of those values of respecting people, regardless of their backgrounds, and listening to them, and learning from them, I learned from her.”

In 2008, while still a U.S. senator, Obama said this in a Mother’s Day statement: “This Mother's Day, I'll be doing what so many other Americans are doing—spending time with my family and thinking about the mothers in my life. My mother, Ann Dunham, was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and what is best in me, I owe to her.”

Perhaps the best-remembered comment by a U.S. president about his mother comes from Richard Nixon in a meandering speech the day that he departed from the White House after resigning from office. “Nobody will ever write a book probably about my mother,” he said, the air in the room heavy. “Well, I guess all of you would say this about your mother: My mother was a saint.” And then he told a story about his mother nursing two boys dying of tuberculosis so that she could take care of Nixon’s older brother—”and when they died, it was like one of her own.”

I know how fundamental mothers are in defining the lives of their children, for good or ill. In my own case, I know I would be a much harder and less healthy person without my mother’s love and support, especially in tough times when she was there to console and guide me. I also credit her for inspiring my love for travel and respect for people of different cultures and backgrounds—and yes, dogs (we always had a dog growing up).

I wrote a book about a very different kind of mother, the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, from whose influence Lee spent much of his short and unstable life trying to escape. As I described in The Gunman and His Mother, Lee “was a troubled projection of her: angry and grandiose, controlling and overwrought, a lost and restless soul plagued with the burden of filling a bottomless well of unfulfilled love. Embittered and yearning to be someone great, he would never have what he really needed.”

Every one of us has stories to tell about our mothers, memories that can be captured with words as well as experiences that reveal themselves in how we act and think and treat others. What has your mother given you? I hope you’ll take a moment to share a story or describe the qualities that have shaped your life.

I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber for $50 a year or just $5 a month, if you’re not already. This helps sustain and expand the work of America, America, keep nearly all the content free for everyone and give you full access to the comments sections.